The amazing world of LEGO® Technic constructions.
Based on the vision from Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891-1958), a carpenter from Billund/Denmark, whose personal motto was "Only the best is good enough" - Leg Godt (Play Well).

TechnicBRICKs blog (TBs hereafter) is devoted to the LEGO Technic theme and intends to spot mainly on news and developments, rather than new sets reviews or users creations (aka MOCs). However you will also find them here occasionally...

Thursday, September 18, 2008

The finished design for his Linear Actuator (LA), made of discrete elements, is an evolution of the initial experiments shown on the original post.This would be better called a Track Actuator (TA) as he explained to me. Technically a TA consist of a moving "car", while LA features an expanding/contracting rod. Nevertheless it would be easy to attach a rod (axle or bricks) to the moving "car", turning it into a LA too.

This new design also has now already some months and it was originally planned to be a new product release, on sale at Mauricio's store (iLegos). Then we discussed some design details, the time passed and here it is today...According to Mauricio, this design was inspired on another LA design suggested by Alexandre (AVCampos), that was also shown before here at TBs on the same original post (the render on the post's top image).

Beauty and ingenious this idea, on how the stop points problem at each LA end was solved, to force the "car" returning automatically on track after the motor direction is reversed. No need for the LEGO clutch or switches. The springs make a nice work freeing the motor from any kind of extra effort or overload and allowing the "car" back in movement after the motor direction is changed.We have discussed small problems on the original prototype reliability, which got also a very simple and effective solution. In the end a small touch with a few orange parts to make it in the spirit and hype of the current PF elements (who the hell, gave this Orange ideia...?).

Yes, it may be too large for the scale of applications usually associated with pneumatics or dedicated LA's, but what if you want it BIG? The first example that pops into my mind is a big legged robot. Conventional pieces would be too short to actuate it, so this extra-long assembly would be much better.

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